#“as for the girl she did not in fact fix him” this is so passive-agressive lmao
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the-sage-libriomancer · 1 year ago
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this isn't even remotely true but the comedic timing is sending me adjksjshsjajsdnajhd
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arrtemisia · 4 years ago
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Hey so... If you could redo cannon Makoto what would you do? How would she change? I'm curious cause out of the main cast she was the only one that I just couldn't get a solid interest in (aside from Ann but that's just cause the idea of her being a fashion model confuses me more than anything I think)
God. So much stuff.
There's a couple big things about her that bug me, and none of them really change at all in her canon vs fanon portrayal, which means it's hard for me to enjoy her even in fanworks. In my opinion, I think her biggest flaw is that she's simply miscast, and her character would have worked much better as a confidant instead of a thief, which would've given her a place of her own to shine and avoid the weird dissonance between different aspects of her character (and this was actually their original plan, so Hifumi would have taken her place which. She would've fit in much better imo bc she's actually suffered under another's will like every single one of the others and she's an actual strategist instead of just """smart,""' but that's a topic for another post), but since we're talking about how I'd personally fix Makoto in the role she currently fills, I'm going to list some of the issues I take with her and potential solutions.
First of all, just to get it out of the way, she needs an actual reason to be here. She doesn't have one, full stop.
The big thing tying the thieves together is that they're all victims of abuse and oppression who rebel against their tormentors and want to prevent anyone else from suffering like they did. I'm not saying Makoto has never struggled, because she has, but it's really, really not the same type of struggle.
This leads to weird moments where everything about Makoto's personality and characterization, such as being a stickler for the rules, idolizing the police, etc mean that she has no in-character reason to stick with the thieves after kaneshiro is dealt with and should maybe even be opposing the thieves' way of doing things, but the plot drags her along anyway because the game really wants her to be a party member. And really, what's up with her awakening? She gets threatened once and then bang-boom-kapow she has a persona? It's weak.
Also before anyone says "well all those things about her personality change when she awakens and she sheds her good girl personality and yada yada," no she doesn't, actually, and I'm getting there I promise
The easiest solution here is also the most drastic. Swap when Makoto and Akechi join. This kills two birds with one stone; Makoto gets an actual reason to awaken through Sae, and Akechi's betrayal hits harder because he's pretending to be with you for longer (although admittedly this is much less needed on Akechi's part ever since royal).
Not only does this give Makoto a much stronger reason to awaken and join in the first place (Sae starts twisting into something horrible and Makoto wants to help both stop and save her), but it also gives her an internally consistent reason to stick around. Before, unlike the others (who all at least have "I want to stop others from feeling like I did," or in Futaba's case, "I wanna find the ppl who killed my mom."), once Kaneshiro is done with, Makoto has no real big personal reason to stick around other than "I'm a thief now and the plot says so ig." Now, of COURSE she'd want to go after Shido because he's the one that was manipulating her sister, and after that of COURSE she'd want to help take down mr divine sippy cup in order to get Shido tried and jailed.
However, if we're not going to shuffle around the order of party members bc that'd nuke the canon plot a little, then we need to rework the entire Kaneshiro arc and/or Makoto's backstory and values as a whole. Yeah this is why the first solution was the easy one.
I'm going to go in-depth about how I feel Makoto's personality and values should be reworked later I'M GETTING THERE, so I'll talk about that then. As for reworking Kaneshiro, I... don't have a whole lot of ideas. The palace itself is fine, it has one of the coolest atmospheres in the game (c'mon, there's got to be a fun bank heist in a game like this), but Makoto's connection with him is very weak. Maybe have it be that he was extorting her for years in secret and she never said anything? Maybe have him be the one that ordered the hit on her father? I'm not sure what would be strong enough to match to the other palace leaders, without feeling forced. I'll have to come up with more ideas for this one.
The second big issue I have with her is less of one specific thing and more of a collection of smaller problems that all come from the same source. She waltzes in, takes over, and starts acting like she's the boss of things. She then names herself the "strategist" and yet only ever states the obvious and, to use a word I hate, mansplains things to you that you already learned two palaces ago. She's constantly condescending and passive agressive to the other team members, especially Ann and Ryuji, berates everyone for not being as naturally book smart as her when all the other characters are smart in their own ways and just not good at academia, all the while everyone around her, even characters that normally wouldn't take that (ryuji, ann) or are too prideful to admit to anyone bring better (mona), are constantly like "You're so cool, Makoto!"
It's a classic case of show don't tell, and rhe game is obsessed with telling you that Makoto is "smart" and "cool." Once she joins the team, all the characters that were originally shown to be smart in their own ways are never allowed to say anything meaningful ever again bc Makoto is the "smart" one. She never does anything particularly different compared to the other party members, but the game is constantly insisting she's special.
I'm very hesitant to call her a mary sue, because I don't think she is one, and also I disagree with the use of that term at all as these days it's just meant to devalue powerful characters that happen to be girls, but I definitely think she's emblematic of a common writing flaw that can lead to mary sues. The problem with making a character the "smart" one as a personality trait instead of something that just comes naturally is that you have to dumb down everyone else's characterization to make them look smarter or cooler by comparison. It means that the character you're trying to prop up bends everyone else around them, making them act in ways they normally wouldn't in order to make the one character you're trying to look cool seem better by comparison.
This has an easy solution: cut that shit out. Have her slowly find her place on the team naturally instead of forcing her way in as a pseudo-leader. Don't give every single "well, duh" line to her, and cut the scenes where she stands around explaining obvious things you already know in a condescending manner so she looks smarter. Let the other characters actually act like themselves when they're in the same room as her instead of bending around her to prop her up. Have her treat those characters with respect in turn, bc for all intents and purposes when it comes to thief stuff they are her senpai, instead of just having her act like she's better than them, or boss them around, or be passive agressive about the fact that their grades are bad. Show that other characters are smart in other ways instead of acting like Makoto's book smarts are the end-all be-all. And for fuck's sake, stop acting like "smart" and "punches stuff real good" are personality traits, which leads me into my last big point.
Makoto and Queen don't really feel like the same character. Okay, so to explain this, let's walk through her awakening again.
Makoto is a good girl who's a stickler for the rules, sucks up to authority, idolizes the police, is obsessed with her grades and academic performance, and looks down on others who don't do the same. A couple people call her useless and then she gets threatened by a mob boss, after which she decides to live her life for herself and completely shed her good girl lifestyle and rebel against everyone pressuring her.
That is, except for the teensy tiny detail where she doesn't.
Nothing significant about her personality changes all post her awakening and joining the thieves, aside from the part where she sucks up to authority maybe a little less. She's still uptight, her grades (and the grades of those on her team) are still her top priority, she still idolizes the law and those enforcing it.
Y'see, persona has a bit of a common problem with saying one thing about a character, be it making a reveal or saying they're gonna change in some big way, but not fully committing to it. You can see it most in p4 (party members saying they're gonna quit/stop/do whatever and then backtracking in the last two ranks of their social link), but it's rarely so severe that it completely ruins their personality and character arc as a whole. Makoto, I feel, is the main exception.
The writers want Makoto to become this tough, rebellious biker queen who oozes badassery in every move and will never follow anyone's wishes for her ever again, but they also want to keep her old personality of the uptight naive rule-following law-abiding academic. So, instead of altering one to better fit the other, they try to do both... badly.
Instead of integrating the two parts of her personality, it just feels like she swaps between them whenever the plot calls for it which is really, really jarring. She'll be stuttering about following the rules and getting to know her generation one second, and then the next she'll be yelling about mowing down shadows with her motorcyle the next. It feels like Queen and Makoto are two separate uninteresting half-characters, with only a couple personality traits each, instead of one whole well-rounded character.
Either rework Makoto's thief aesthetic to better suit her personality as a whole and give her something other than "I'm totally not a good girl anymore" to make her compelling, or actually commit to Makoto shedding her past life everyone around her had forced on her and change her personality. Have her grades start to slip, have her talk back to Sae, change the way she dresses so it's rougher and less perfect, hell, maybe even have her quit student council. Just, anything to make her more well-rounded as a character.
I have some other nitpicks with her here and there, like the fact that her confidant is actually just Eiko's confidant and doesn't give Makoto herself any development, or the way the game keeps trying to set her up as Joker's waifu or whatever, but those are just that; nitpicks. The three big things I mentioned earlier - her not having a compelling personal reason to be a part of the thieves, the way the writers shove her into the spotlight by putting down everyone around her, and the fact that her characterization is just one badass half and one smart half that don't mesh and have little else in between - are the problems I feel are what's actually holding her character back.
Again, I do think that all of this stems from the fact that she's miscast, but it's too late to fix that now. While I personally really dislike Makoto, I do kind of understand her appeal for others when she's written well, and she's a totally valid character to like. I just wish she was portrayed better.
(Also, if anyone wants to reblog this, feel free I ask that you please don't put this in Makoto's main character tag. I know how much it sucks to get a bunch of negativity in a character's main tags as I am an Edelgard fe3h fan)
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futurewriter2000 · 6 years ago
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Let’s get pissed
Today sucked. Yes, it mf sucked. I didn’t know I can curse as much as I did today. Like, new record. 
So, FIRSTLY what happend was that my math teacher like - fuck him. Like how can he even say those things to students and not be ashamed of himself. To say that we are unintelligent dumbasses who can’t think for themselves just because they didn’t ask a question. Like, I’m sorry for thinking and figuring out the (math) problem on my own because whenever I aske him a question, he decides to be curt and mean, shouting at me for not knowing something he studies and repeats for 60 years of his life. Do you know how that makes me feel? For someone calling me stupid and unintelligent? Does he even know what is going on in my life. I’m great at math. Fucking amazing at it but yeah maybe I did fail my test because my family life is a bit fucked up at the moment and I don’t live in the middle of the forest where everything is quiet and peacful like he does. 
SECONDLY, what happened was English class. Oh, yeah let’s talk about English class. BECAUSE GOD JUST LOVES TO FUCK WITH ME DOESN’T HE! Because he knows how much I love English and he knows how much I love to write in English but nooo, my professor had a bad day and we got our tests back and I got a 3 with ONE POINT to get a 4. And my answer was correct and it said “was” on the answer sheet but the letter a was a bit fucked up because I fixed it from the word “is” to the word “ was” but it was clear that that word was the letter “was”. And I went up to her and I asked her why is it wrong and she told me that she doesn’t know what that word meant: And I was like ??? WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT THAT WORD WAS! IT’S THE WORD “WAS” WITH A CLEAR LETTER W a bit fucked up letter a and a clear letter S. W.a.S. Andf like from my classmate who writes for shit and makes words look like a wavy line she is telling me she couldn’t read that word! And she knows I’m good at English and SHE KNOWS I love English! And I said “ It’s a was.” and she replied. “ Not to me, it’s not.”. So I sat down and tried to find another mistake and I did. My answer was correct just two words were switched up. And I went up to her and told her why is this wrong and she told me because two words are switched up. And I asked her that why does that matter because no matter how many words are switched up, the Present Simple is still converted into Past Simple and technically the sentance is correct either way, whether the two words are switched up or not. And she said. “ Not for me.”. So I told her about another mistake that was about “ did live” and “lived” which are both correct but still she told me that “lived” is wait for this...MORE correct thatn “did live”. LIKE ARE YOU FUCKING WITH ME?!?!? I found 3 points which I should get and she doesn’t want to give even one for me to get a fucking 4. The point is that it’s not even about the grade. I don’t care if I get a 4 or a 3 but like the fact that she knows that this 3 is about to lower my average at English class and that we both know that what I wrote was correct and that my thinking was correct she still went like “I know you didn’t study becasue you think you know English. Learn a lesson.” . The point is that it’s not fair for her to decide whether something is MORE correct than the other answer. The point that I will come to some American or English dude and tell him “ yes, he did live there.” or “ yes, he lived there.” he will understand it. The point is that RULES IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE are not used IN REAL LIFE!.It’s not like I’m gonna say a sentance to a man and think about it if I should say it in active or passive. And the worst part is that my friend who is from another country and she is struggling with slovenian (which is my mothertongue and the official language we speak in my country) and she’s struggling with tests because of it and english as well, she had the same mistakes as me and IF this professor was fair she would understand at least a bit and give her a passing grade instead of BEING A BITCH and tell her “ Well, you’re getting better at least. It’s a negative grade but your getting better.” LIKE FUCK YOU! SHE IS ALREADY SPEAKING FOUR LANGUAGES PLUS SHE’S GETTING BETTER WITH SLOVENE WHICH IS 5 AND I’D LIKE TO SEE THE PROFESSOR SWITCH UP FROM MACEDONIAN TO BOSNIAN TO SLOVENIAN TO ENGLISH! LIKE FUCK HER!  Honestly, when we get those answer sheets back imma throw that shit into gabrbage right in front of her nose because if she thinks my English will be defined by those stupid mistakes and that stupid grade than she is fucking wrong! She really is going to see hell from me, now on. 
Yeah, school pisses me off a lot.
Thirdly...let’s say my sister brought her ex HERE! To our apartment. My dad went into a night shift and my sister used that as a chance to bring her ex or whatever he is, they weren’t really dating, but she brought him. And backstory. That prick cheated on her, told her shit, made her feel like shit, made her cry like every three months if not monthly and that was happening for 4 years. Yes, four. Since I started High School. So, I hate the guy. I hate him and he is the worst. What he does, to those girls, what he does to his friends, how he uses people...he’s a horrible guy. Drugs, alcohol... I hate him. I really do. I just don’t like people who use other people, that’s it.  Anyways, my sister called him. AND MY HEAD WAS ABOUT TO OPEN AND RIP HERS OFF HER NECK BECAUSE SHE KNOWS HOW MUCH I HATE HIM AND SHE KNOWS HOW UNCOMFORTABLE AND ANXIOUS HE MAKES ME FEEL AND SHE KNOWS THAT RIGHT NOW I AM ABOUT AS THIS CLOSE TO KILLING HER AND HIM. And she dragged her friend to reason with my anger. hohoho...like clearly she can’t fight her battles herself with me and her friend was like “ look she won’t listen to me so i support her. You should do the smae.” LIKE EXCUSE ME! YOUR BEST FRIEND CALLED A GUY OVER WHEN EVERYBODY KNOWS HOW THIS GUY RUINS HER AND YOU JUST SUPPORT HER! LIKE YEAH! IF SHE SAID SHE WAS GOING TO KILL HERSELF, YOU’D GO LIKE “ Yea, look she won’t listen to me so I support her. You should do the same.” LIKE ARE YOU REALLY THAT DUMB! WHAT KIND OF A BEST FRIEND SAYS THAT THEY SUPPORT THEIR BEST FRIEND TO GO RUIN THEMSELVES! SHE IS MY SISTER! MY SISTER! MY SISTER WHO I HAVE BEEN THE ONE COMFORTING HER FOR THE PAST 4 YEARS WHENEVER HE FUCKED UP! WHO WAS THERE TO WIPE HER TEARS AND WRAP MY ARMS AROUND HER AND CALM HER DOWN FOR HOURS AND HOURS! WHERE WERE YOU HUH! WHERE WERE YOU THEN! YOU DON’T KNOW SHIT!  And then she said- hahaha- yeah, she said “ You’ve never experianced what is like being in love. It blinds you.” - Like first of all, I did and she doesn’t know shit about my life because I don’t tell everybody my private life. And secondly, love blinds you, yes BUT GOD IT DOESN’T MAKE YOU THAT STUPID! FOR 4 YEARS! I have done nothing to my sister to betray her. I have done nothing to disrespect her because I know that she took care of me when I was a baby but to see myself being used like that. To see her choose him over me, over and over again. That shit hurts! That shit hurts so much and it feels like the worst betrayal. It feels worst than a heartbreak and it feels worst to see somebody who you have known all your life, trusted in them everything, to see them exploit it...to see them exploit me. I just don’t think I can ever forgive her for that. I didn’t even get an apology. I didn’t even get a sorry... and you know what... she’s not getting me back this time. Not anymore. Now she really is on her own.
Okay, last thing. Yes, I’m making this really long. I mentioned it a lot of time that my dad is an agressive drunk. Yes, I’m just kind of giving that out there. He puts me through hell almost every day. Now, my best friend who is working in a bar where my dad goes to, says “Your dad is funny.”. Oh, don’t we all know it. HE IS JUST HILARIOUS ISN’T HE! IT’S SO GREAT TO SEE A DRUNK BEING FUNNY! HE IS SO SO SO SO SO SO FUNNY! Yeah. You know what else is funny. The time he came home and started throwing plates at us. You know what else is funny, being a kid and being scared every night and feel your heart beating so fast when you hear somoene unlocking the door at 1 am, afraid he will get another of his episodes. You know what’s funny too? Funny thing is thata he almost cut his own fingers because he THOUGHT my mom was cheating on me.  Because he heard a RUMOR! My mom didn’t cheat on him until she decided to leave him and get herself a life she truly desereved. Funny things, like a 11 year old child seeing their father lose their minds and ripping his shirt off of him and shouting and giving my mother as well as me death threats. Funny, how when I was in the worst situation, he decided to attack me and I ran away. And funny how I needed to go back home and still live with this monster. IT’S FUNNY! RIGHT! IT’S SO FUNNY THAT IT JUST MAKES YOUR STOMACH ACHE FROM ALL THE LAUGHTER! 
IT’S SO FUNNY BEING SOMEONE WHO HIDES EVERYTHING INSIDE OF THEM! EVERY EMOTION, EVERY SECRET, THE FEARS, THE AGONY OF THEIR LIFE. And you know what’s the worst part. When you tell someone “ I’ve had a bad day.” they reply with “ Just get over it. You’re only 18. You don’t know how hard life can get.”
And this makes me cry.
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ecotone99 · 6 years ago
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[RF] How Tinder made me realise that I’m a bad person (I am female).
\All names have been changed for the sake of anonymity.*
PART ONE:
NO ANSWER
One of the most frustrating thing about being a bad person, is knowing you’re a bad person but not being able — or not wanting — to stop it.
I joined Tinder back in 2014. I was 22, and attractive enough to get hit on once a day (which isn’t boasting — most girls my age receivethe same kind of attention). While out to dinner one night, my entire circle of female friends joined at the same moment, agreeing that we’d enjoy the novelty of selecting men based on their photo and seeing if those men returned the favour. I can’t speak for all of them, but I assumed that the idea of actually conversing with any of these men — let alone meeting up with one — never entered any of our minds.
For the first week or so, I was very selective on who I “swiped right”, and I “matched” with every single one of them either instantly or within a day of the swipe. Most of the men would open with some asinine question or ho-hum one-liner. I was never even remotely interested in replying.
What was interesting is that most, if not all of these men would take my lack of response as a failure to make a good first impression. So they’d try again, and again, and again, each message using a different tactic to try and get me to reply.
The order of events almost always went as follows: they’d start out with wit, then self-deprecation, then earnestness. Then they’d throw out a compliment, then downplay that compliment, then say something “jokingly” mean, then something casually judgemental. Then they’d get apologetic, then attempt to explain away their multiple messages as the opposite of desperate. Then would come the passive aggression, then the slight suggestion of actual aggression, then actual aggression, and then finally they’d explode into outright, chauvinistic, insult-ridden rage.
My girlfriends — at least, the ones who hadn’t started actually interacting with their matches — were experiencing almost identical patterns of behaviour when met with radio silence. While we’d have have a chuckle about it, most of the girls would express guilt and admit that what they were doing was mean. Just as we all pledged to download the app, we made a pact to delete it.
I was part of that pact, but curiously, had no intention of honouring it. My dirty little secret was that unlike them, I felt no guilt, found it genuinely hilarious, and almost enjoyed the experience of witnessing someone grow increasingly insane as they have a one-way conversation with a series of pictures.
At the time, I rationalised this enjoyment and lack of guilt as harmless. If anything, I was proving that most men are entitled and that directly beneath any man’s kind exterior lied an aggressive, woman-hating asshole. My 22-year-old self would even go as far as to think that my actions were reasonable, or even honourable — a feministic method of unveiling man’s true colours.
So, I started swiping right on a less-discerning selection of men. Those that I didn’t find aesthetically appealing, even those whose profiles were blatantly ignorant or bigoted, would get a swipe to the east.
And boy, the cross-section of insanity demonstrated by this larger sample size was gobsmacking. These reactions to my radio silence were more entertaining that any book, than any film or TV show. I became addicted to guessing the path each individual would take towards a meltdown, and it even got to the point that upon receiving a particular message, I could predict exactly what would come next,almost down to the letter.
Deep down, I knew this wasn’t acceptable behaviour, so I only told one friend about it — the one who had issues with men in general. We’d both have a laugh about it, but I’d downplay how much I was getting off on it. She was one of the girls who had been on the receiving end of similar meltdown’s, but now just used Tinder as a means of validation — propped up by the fact that all these guys thought she was hot, but “nice” enough to instantly delete them after the ego fix. Even then, she expressed guilt over the behaviour and said she was a few days away from deleting the app.
Most of my other girlfriends had grown to use Tinder alongside their real-life dating world, and one had even entered a relationship with someone she met on it. Very quickly, the world was starting to embrace this kind of technology- and it was no longer deemed as desperate or sad to use the net to meet people. So, I could no longer be as open about how I still thought it was all so pathetic.
I thought I’d grow tired of this eventually, and that the intentional provocation would soon be a thing of the past. I was right about the first part.
PART II
ANSWER
Mark was a sports journalist. He liked Rugby Union and Game of Thrones. He enjoyed socialising but also a quiet night in with a boutique beer. He was looking for anything from fun to something more.
He had light grey eyes, one hell of a beach body, and a tiny moustache that looked like a splayed-out dead spider. And he was the first match to which I actually replied.
Mark’s one-way conversation was carried out over a period of weeks. He was one of the rare guys who only messaged every once in a while, and whose meltdown wasn’t as extreme as the others. In fact, I’d say he didn’t melt all the way down. Or very far down at all. He would just say random things that popped into his head, but none of them seemed like tactics. Almost like he was using our chatbox as a notepad.
Then one evening, when I was on an actual date with a guy who would end up being my boyfriend, he wrote a long message that really hit a nerve. He called me on thoughts I hadn’t shared with anyone, as if he knew I had this bizarre, voyeuristic bent. But he wasn’t aggressive about it, he was matter of fact, maybe even a little understanding. If I wasn’t four prosecco’s down, then I probably wouldn’t have replied.
But I did. I told him that what he said was ridiculously insulting and that I’d been super busy and not looking at the app. I told him thathe was a judgemental asshole and that just because he was a man he wasn’t owed a reply.
The label of entitled chauvinist didn’t sit well with Mark, and his reply was apologetic and remorseful. When I didn’t respond, he made aneven deeper apology. He then tried to explain his intentions, then admitted that something in his past had made him not trust women, buthe was working on it. Before long, just like all the others, he landed on Agression Island; retracting his apology and reinforcing his
judgements of me. The last few messages were filled with some of the most vile, disturbing insults I’d ever read.
And I loved every minute of it. The insults had no effect on me, as I knew the intention behind them — to make me feel as bad as they did.
Mark helped me. realise that through my replies, I could make menmeltdown in more interesting ways. Without saying much at all, I could essentially control the way they felt about themselves. No longer was I an innocent bystander watching a train-wreck. I was laying objects on the track that would cause it. It was so much more thrilling, and equally satisfying.
Unlike during the period of intentional radio silence, after Mark, I did feel a fleeting pang of guilt. Or to be more honest, guilt over the fact that I should feel more guilty. In my real, face-to-face world, I would never, ever think to treat a man in this way. This was almost like a game. A first-person adventure game where the aim was to prove every man was, deep down, a horrible animal.
By now, I was in a semi-serious relationship, but I wasn’t willing to give up my secret pastime. Afraid my online world would intersect withthe real one, I deleted my existing Tinder account, then created a new one under a different name, a different age, and linked to a different
Facebook account (this was back when you had to use Facebook in order to use Tinder). I put up photos that looked the least like I did in real life, or ones that featured my body and only offered a suggestion of my face. As far as I was concerned, I could have been anyone.
I’m not sure how long this post-radio silence stage lasted. But if you’re interested, here are some of the messages I received during thereply period:
Example 1.
“I am the last person who would ever call a girl the c-word, but I am so close to using it for the first time right now. I’m not going to let you provoke me into saying it. I’m not going to let you win. I’m unmatching you”
Then, 20 mins later, from the same guy:
“You are a cunt”.
Then, the following morning:
“I can’t believe I called someone a cunt. I’m actually crying here. I can’t believe you made me do something I never thought I’d ever do. Ididn’t mean it. You definitely deserved to be called something, but not that. You might have not been very nice to me, but I went further than you and I deserve any insult you can think of.”
Then, not long after.
“God, you really are a cunt, aren’t you? Turns out there are actual girls out there that deserve the word. Learn something new every day.”
User 2
“You’re exactly like every other attention-seeking whore on here. You probably have like 8 sugar daddies and fuck anyone with their own boat. I look forward to when your looks fade and you’re sitting in the corner of a bar, staring at your prune hands and wondering where it all went wrong. Luckily, I have a good heart. Have a nice life.”
Then, a bit later from the same guy.
“I hope you get raped by a homeless man”
Yet, no matter the severity, I still didn’t take any of their insults to heart. The more severe the message; the more it’s intention was to hurt me — the wider my grin. I know it’s warped, but all it meant that I had won by a larger margain.
What did insult me, though, was the rare case of a guy not taking the bait and unmatching me without a reply. I’d experience a never-before-felt inner anger, and be in a horrible mood for the rest of the day. One time, I even tried to find one such guy on Facebookbased on his first name, but quickly realised the desperation of such an endeavour.
So, I guess, with all the above in mind, and a bit of hindsight, when I matched with a guy who not only didn’t take the bait, but both revelled in my attempts to rattle him, but also gave back in a way that I couldn’t put down to chauvinism or privilege, it’s understandable that I, for the first time and on an impulse, agreed to do something I’d never do.
PART III
MEETING.
I agreed to meet Maurice in roughly an hour after our online exchange. If it had been any longer, I would have cancelled. As the hour progressed, the exhilaration of our text confrontation was interrupted by thoughts of my actual life and “real” character out in the real world.
By the time it reached ten minutes before our scheduled meeting, I was back in societally polite mode, wondering what the heck I was doing. Not only did I have a boyfriend for whom I genuinely cared, but I was taking something that wasn’t quite real — something I framed as a twisted online game — into real life. So I quickly made a decision.
As soon as we’d meet, I’d admit that I only agreed to it in order to apologise. I’d say that I was just fucking with him and that I was actually a nice person. I’d reveal that I had a boyfriend but suggest we still have a friendly drink and chat so as not to come across as atotal asshole. Then I’d head on home.
Even though he was about a half-block away, waiting at a pedestrian light, I instantly recognised Maurice. He was an overweight, balding man in his 40s, who was even more overweight and hairless than in hisphotos. But as the light turned green and he started towards me — I was taken aback. He had the swagger of a man who knew he had it going on but didn’t have to show it off. Think the air of Ryan Gosling trapped in the owner of an old mom and pop burger joint.
We shook hands, and I was polite and light. As was he, but as we walked to the closest pub, he retained this knowing, almost devilish grin.
After a single drink, it seemed that Maurice wasn’t intimidated by my looks, nor my youth. It didn’t seem as if he had any interest in trying to impress me. At first, I thought this was his act — the only way a man like him could reach out of his league (I know that sounds mean, but we really were apples and oranges when it came to level of hotness), but then he began to compliment me on my online attempts to get him riled up — quoting some of my best messages. He was genuinely impressed by that behaviour — as if the worse my text provocation, the more interesting it made me.
This threw me for a loop. My polite-mode switch was trembling, eager to edge towards the off position. The hunger with which lead me to cut online men down to size, began to rumble in my belly.
So, I began picking away at anything he told me about his life. Not like I would have online — more akin to light-hearted teasing. Every time I thought of a genuinely meanspirited provocation, it just wouldn’t leave my mouth. When he argued that looks are subjective and that personality can turn roadkilled pizza into the Statue of David, I made an obviously light-hearted comment about the size of the latters’ nether-organ.
Instead of faux-self-deprecation or puffing out his chest out of insecurity, he stared me right in the eye and told me the exact size of his penis and how it was below average. He then said that from experience, he knew for sure that the “it’s not the size, but what you do with it” argument was only a half-truth, and that over the years, due to his size often not satisfying a woman, he’d become an expert at using his mouth.
It’s as if he knew that it was going to be something that I found out anyway, so he’d may as well be honest. In other words, he was certain I was going to see it, and see it that night. The thing is, it didn’t read as arrogance, and while it came across as confident, it wasn’t confidence. It was just…as if, it was a given — a fact spoken in the same fashion as if replying to “what’s the time?”
The drinks kept flowing, and the more I tried to rattle him with mean-spirited banter, the more he seemed to enjoy it. When my teasing turned to outright bitchiness, he only seemed to enjoy it more. The rage inside me was a whistling like a kettle. I wanted to wield the same sharp harshness that I could online. I wanted to crack open his personality and watch the insecure devil ooze out onto the already sticky pub floor. Most of all, I wanted to win.
But I just couldn’t seem to get there.
I can try to blame drinking for the decision I ended up making, but truth be told, it wasn’t the booze — it was desperation. I escaped to the bathroom, rushed into a stall, where I was able to fully access the Tinder part of my personality. I almost instantly figured out what I could lay on the tracks to cause this elusive train-wreck.
My plan was to go home with him, sleep with him, and, as I was never a huge fan of cunnilingus anyway, use his inability to satisfy me through that method as a way to crack him open. Funnily enough, though I found him aesthetically repulsive, the idea of sleeping with him wasn’t actually grossing me out. I think a tiny part of me was attracted to him.
When he ended up going down on me, it may have felt a bit better than it ever had in the past, but not enough for him to notice. I feigned boredom and lay like a frozen fish until he eventually gave up. When I said it wasn’t happening for me, he was convinced I was faking it just to rattle him, and initially seemed unfazed. He even asked if I wanted to have one last drink before I left.
As we sipped on some cheap red, I noticed a slight shift in his demeanour. I continued to taunt him for his delusions about being some master of cunnilingus, and the more I taunted, the more his magnetic persona seemed destabilised. Finally, when I said that I pitied him, the meltdown began.
Eventually, he was sobbing. Turns out that he despised himself, that the only way he ever attracted a woman was through well-honed, fake bravado, and that the only thing he thought he ever had going for him was his ability to pleasure a woman through cunnilingus. I’d reduced him to nothing, and he could tell that I was revelling in it.
Just as I’d hoped — he turned into every other man — hurling vile insults at me and kicking me out the door. As I neatened my outfit in the elevator mirror, I couldn’t help but beam. It was the beam of someone who’d just won Olympic gold.
As my journey home progressed, I was exhilarated, yet increasingly sick at the fact that I was exhilarated. I thought my online exploits were a game — but now that I’d got off on it in real life, and still felt no guilt — what did that mean? Was I genuinely evil? I couldn’t be a sociopath because I love and care for others, am always considering my family’s feelings, and the idea of hurting them even a hair upsets me to no end.
Where did this desire to hurt men come from? Was I repressing something from my youth? Some horrible treatment at the hands of a man? No matter how much I looked inwards or filed through my memories, I couldn’t think of a reason. I’d never been hurt by a man. I’d never even been dumped by one. My father was decent, loving, and dedicated to my mother. There was no explanation. I felt like the devil.
PART IV
CATCHING
I did, however, feel guilty for cheating on my boyfriend. Over the weeks that followed, I began monitoring his behaviour for any signs of infidelity. When we went out, I would accuse him of looking at other women. If he talked about a female work colleague, I’d ask suspicious questions. Eventually, I found a. way to access his emails and Facebook account to see if he was doing anything remotely dishonest.
He wasn’t.
The longer this went on, the more he seemed to be shutting down. He’d always doted on me, worshipped my body, showered me in romance. He usually couldn’t get enough of me. But now, it was as if he knew that something was up, and was waiting for me to confess.
Turns out, he knew more than “something was up”, but it wasn’t the sleeping with Maurice. It was the fact that my online behaviour had gotten back to him. A new client from work had seen my picture on his phone screen, and said it looked a little like a girl he’d met on Tinder. Once they became chummy enough to converse over a couple of beers, they came to the conclusion that I was that girl. That not only was I on multiple dating apps, but I had taunted him on his looks, on his job, on anything about his life that he shared.
When my boyfriend called me on it — I said that yes, I’d been using dating apps, but only as a lark, to prove that most men were actually. horrible underneath. I said that while it wasn’t admirable behaviour, that I’d only done it to a handful of men, and that they deserved to be proven for what they were. To justify my actions, I invented the story of a fake ex-boyfriend who had hurt me deeply — so deeply that I’d never before mentioned him.
My boyfriend bought it, but said that this was a side of me that he didn’t know existed, and that he needed some time to digest it. He wasn’t breaking up with me. He was just trying to figure out how he felt about it. He was perhaps the most avid male supporter of women’s rights I’d ever met, and that fact, coupled with his own past issues with bullying at the hands and mouths of boys, meant that he shared the belief that most men were assholes.
He decided that in theory, he understood why I did what I did, but that I should probably talk to someone professional, just for my own inner peace. I agreed, and also agreed to delete the apps.
I never went to a shrink, and keep telling my boy that I will, eventually. I now have a second phone, and dating app profiles that show my body, but obscure my face. I even used photoshop to mask anything identifying. I match with just as many men, and take them down just as hard. When I occasionally match with a Maurice-type, I meet them in person. and do what I can to force a meltdown. I can’t stop. I know it’s going to catch up with me soon, but it doesn’t make a difference. This is my addiction. I enjoy it and hate that I enjoy it more than anything on earth.I know now, that part of me is genuinely bad. And as I said, the hardest part about being a bad person is in knowing you’re a bad person. There’s only one man that I haven’t steered towards a meltdown — one that I’m fighting so hard not to do it to. But I fantasise aboutit all the time, and it’s only a matter of time before I get to him too.
He’s currently lying next to me.
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